RECENT RESEARCHES ON CHLOROFORM 



ANAESTHESIA 



By GEORGE A. BUCKMASTER, D.M. (Oxon) 



Assistant Professor of Physiology, University College, London 



PAGE 



i. Introductory 625 



2. The Relations which may exist between Chloroform 



and Blood 631 



3. The Anaesthetic and Lethal Quantities of Chloroform 



in the Blood 639 



4. The Rate of Assumption of Chloroform by the Blood . 642 



5. The Function of the Red Corpuscles in Chloroform 



ANiESTHESIA 646 



6. The Rate at which Chloroform is eliminated from 



the Blood after Anaesthesia 648 



Any one who at the present time reflects upon the advances which 

 have taken place in medical practice within the last twenty-five 

 years will easily recognise that the introduction of antiseptic 

 and aseptic methods — for which all mankind is under a lasting 

 debt to Lord Lister — has largely increased the frequency of 

 surgical operations. The frequency with which general 

 anaesthetics are employed has consequently also augmented 

 to an equal or even greater extent, and it may be admitted 

 that the safe administration of such a drug as chloroform is 

 to a large extent dependent upon the skill of the individual 

 anaesthetist. However, deaths may, and do, occur during 

 anaesthesia. Life may be lost before an operation has been 

 commenced, and the cause or causes of such an accident has 

 been the subject of much useless speculation, and also of some 

 valuable experimental work on the physiology of anaesthesia. 

 The whole science and art of medicine advances sometimes at 

 a slow, sometimes at a quicker rate, but any given degree of 

 progress is almost entirely regulated by those additions to 

 knowledge which are founded upon exact experiments carried 

 out in laboratories. 



During the past few years the subject of anaesthesia by 



625 



